


And Many Nights Endure Without a Moon

by perphesone



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Longing, M/M, Post-Series, Pre-Movies, Repression, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23950312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perphesone/pseuds/perphesone
Summary: At the interrupted marriage ceremony on Vulcan, Spock was inadvertently bonded to Jim. Instead of bringing their relationship to the point of consummation, it opened a permanent gulf between them that Spock refuses to cross.Written for Caught the Darkness 2020, inspired by the songs of Leonard Cohen, including "True Love Leaves no Traces" and "Bird on the Wire"
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 21
Kudos: 84
Collections: Caught The Darkness (Star Trek Fandom Event - May 2020)





	And Many Nights Endure Without a Moon

**Author's Note:**

> “And many nights endure  
> Without a moon, without a star  
> So will we endure  
> When one is gone and far
> 
> True love leaves no traces  
> If you and I are one  
> It's lost in our embraces  
> Like stars against the sun”  
> \- _True Love Leaves no Traces_
> 
>   
> These songs and the others that inspired this fic can be listened to [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2C0t3g5mjx5V2T1vuL4qox?si=0c72g4D_T-WwwMztvE0UeQ) on my writing playlist on spotify if you so desire. Thank you to tooberjoober (AO3)/spocksgotemotions (tumblr) for beta reading!

Sometimes, towards the end of their five years in space, Jim would touch his hand in private.

Jim had always touched him in public – a hand on his shoulder, a touch on the elbow, both arms pulling him out of the line of fire, a bracing slap on the back; _man to man_ , as the Earthlings said. As he understood it.

And they would lash out, both of them, when it was necessary: a slap on the face to break delirium, both hands on the temples to search the mind, or else a brawl with ancient weaponry to satisfy the old ceremony when it called them to Vulcan.

On the sands, they had touched – bruised, cut, and choked – under the three suns of Vulcan, their intentions laid bare before the matriarch T’Pau, the bride T’Pring, the lover Stonn, the healer McCoy, and the open eyes of the _watcher,_ the sister of Vulcan: the planet T’Khut.

The ceremony on Vulcan had been years ago. Jim was alive and well. Spock had not killed him. But he had done something else. He had tied them together in a way that Jim could not understand.

Jim put his hand on Spock, warm like the sun across his back, when they posed for a holo-image on the day they returned from the five-year mission. The flashbulb left spots in his eyes. They were the best command team in the fleet.

“Where to now, Mr. Spock?” Jim asked later, with his arm slung around Spock’s shoulders, on a crowded street in San Francisco.

“I will return to Vulcan.”

Jim’s smile stretched. “I meant right this minute. What about a drink? And don’t tell me it doesn’t work on you – I’ve read the articles on Vulcans and alcohol now – you can’t fool me twice.”

He met Jim’s eyes. It was as good as saying _yes._

\---

It was a place with a lot of dark rooms; the walls and ceiling sucked up light like velvet. They found a table where no moon or stars could reach them and they wouldn’t be recognized, and they drank but didn’t touch.

“What if I went with you?” Jim asked. His hand stretched out across the table, with one quarter of one inch remaining between his fingertips and Spock’s. “To Vulcan.”

“Jim,” said Spock. It was as good as saying _no._

\---

But he did visit.

Jim spent a month on Vulcan that next year, living with Spock in the apartment in the capital city, Shi’Kahr. It was larger than the room they had shared once on Earth, when they had thought they might never return to their own time. They had separate rooms with separate beds, though they shared every hour of the day.

Jim read history while Spock meditated in the early morning. Later, Spock held a book of poetry open in front of him and sipped from a cup of tea while Jim cooked breakfast. Jim no longer touched him. He would not touch him on Vulcan.

Spock suspected that he had made the choice out of respect for Vulcan custom. It would have been quite reasonable, after all. A different voice told him that it was because Spock no longer commanded whatever power had first attracted Jim those years ago. He had wasted it, refused it, and now he had lost it. If he tried to use it now, he would find it impossible.

He watched Jim’s eyes, which were focused on the pancakes, watching for bubbles in the batter that would tell him it was time to flip them over. Sun from the window played in his irises, bringing out the green in the hazel like moss growing on rocks after rain.

It had always been impossible. He swallowed shame from the warm clay cup in his hands, drinking tea on a cool, sun-soaked morning during an unseasonably mild T’lakht as though he deserved it. Idly, he thought of all the lives Jim could have had if he hadn’t been bound to Spock – or if Spock had simply denied him, cut him off, as he should have from the start.

But he had known since the _koon-ut kal-i-fee._ They would always be caught in a half life, not touching or touched, but neither free to embrace any other. Jim had not understood what it meant when he had agreed to the challenge.

Whenever Spock loosened his grip, he felt Jim’s _katra_ spark at the base of his skull, asking to share his body with him. Again and again, when it happened, he pushed it out. Whatever part of the bond could not be broken, he repressed. He hoped, perhaps in vain, that it did not trouble Jim too much to feel him in his mind when his discipline slipped. It was possible that he did not even notice the feeling when it came, or did not understand what it meant. Humans, as Spock had so often been reminded, did not share the psychic powers of Vulcans.

He had wondered, at first, whether he must speak of it to Jim. In the end, he acted in accordance with the logic of Vulcan: he never broached the subject. There was no reason to cause more disturbance to Jim’s mind than he already had – particularly when there was no more that he could do to lessen the effects of their psychic bond. To call attention to its presence would only increase Jim’s discomfort. Therefore, they did not discuss it. Whatever comfort Spock found, he found in the hope that Jim did not even know it was there.

They spent their days in peace together; their nights in separate torment. Then ended the month of T’lakht. T'ke'Tas began, and Jim left for home.

\---

And Spock was also called at times to Earth.

He met Jim in San Francisco. Another time, he met Jim in Dublin. Another time, in Paris. In San Francisco for the second time, Jim pulled his hand across the table in the Italian restaurant and stroked his thumb across the knuckles. Spock tore his hand away. Fear poured from his mind right down to his stomach and red wine spilled from his glass, knocked over and teetering on the edge of the table. Jim slumped back in the booth as if he had been physically pushed. The wine-stain spread out across the checkered tablecloth and dripped down onto the floor.

\---

But Jim could not have understood. In Paris, Spock had taken his hand under the table without looking, and ashamed of being caught had simply held it there, afraid that letting go would only draw attention to the mistake he had already made.

It was not fair to his friend; he knew.

\---

And when they slept at the same time, they risked sharing dreams.

It was a known and well-documented phenomenon. Surak himself observed the sharing of the unconscious between lovers. It was because they were not lovers that Spock could not allow the unsupervised transference of thought to take place.

When they were on the same planet, Spock could prepare. He could draw a black curtain around himself; build a cell and lock himself inside like a horned beast at the time of his weakness; like the werewolf of old Earth literature. With his desires confined to the center of a self-made labyrinth, he would pass the night in a dreamless sleep and reach out to no one.

But when Spock was on Vulcan, and Jim was on Earth, there were times when their hours of sleep overlapped. Then, Jim would find Spock defenseless. He would blow in on a golden wind and bloom in Spock’s mind, covering the old sands with new seeds. Spock would wake with a pleasant warm feeling throughout his whole body.

He would know at once what had happened. He would retreat to a dark room, where he would light candles and incense and sit in meditation for hours, carefully sifting what was his from what was not. When he emerged from his trance, he would feel again the hunger of separation. He would know that he had done the right thing; he had done it well.

Other times, in his dreams, he would meet with Jim Kirk on the ceremonial sands.

They would not stand under the three suns of Vulcan, or the matriarch T’Pau, or the bride T’Pring, or the lover Stonn, or the healer McCoy. In the dark of night, there would be only T’Khut, _the watcher._ Only her, for Vulcan had no moons.

Instead of a challenge, there would be a consummation.

\---

(Hearing again the command, “Live long and prosper,” he would be reminded of his own one-time reply: “I shall do neither.”)

\---

Doctor McCoy had taught him once about that barbaric fishing practice of Earth: piercing a live worm with a fishing hook in order to use it as bait. When Jim came to Vulcan again, he sank back into Spock as easily as a hook into one of those Earth worms. They stayed together in a house in the seaside city Kir Ahl and walked along the beach in the evenings with their trousers rolled up and their feet in the water.

They played chess games of several variants.

They read together: Shakespeare, Goethe, and Woolf of Earth; Azeraik, T’Lara, and Ayhan of Vulcan.

One evening that they walked together, they stayed out long past sunset, following the line of the Thanar Sea for hours, until the full assembly of Vulcan constellations glittered overhead, as well as beside them, reflected in the sea. Night on Vulcan was cold in the desert and colder on the coast. At a certain point, Jim began to shiver and wrapped his arms around himself. They turned back towards the house, but it would be a long walk yet.

Jim pulled Spock towards him – not with his hands or any physical gesture, but with a signal of seemingly subliminal transmission – until they walked with arms around each other’s waists.

If he _had_ been human –

 _If I were human,_ Spock thought, _I would let him be mine._

 _But if you were human,_ the other voice reminded him, _you would never have marked his heart with your Vulcan ritual. You would never have trapped him. He would never be yours to claim._

They looked up at the sky while they walked. They talked about art and philosophy. They talked about old times. They talked about the stars.

\---

_(“See that star up there? Alpha Lyra. Do you remember when you and I were stuck on Alpha Lyra V for a week?”_

_“Yes, Jim, but that star is not Alpha Lyra. That star is known among Earth people as Gamma Chamaeleon.”_

_“Really? I’m certain that’s Alpha Lyra.”_

_“Alpha Lyra is not visible from Vulcan.”_

_“Are you sure? Say, we’ve been to Gamma Chamaeleon too, haven’t we?”_

_“Yes, Jim. Gamma Chamaeleon II.”_

_“That’s what I said, Mister Spock.”)_

\---

In this way, the days came and went.

In what seemed to be no time at all, he had almost exhausted his freedom. The seven years had nearly passed. Old words rang in his head. Before long, the drums would pound. His blood would burn. The old ceremony wanted him again, and this time he had no bride. There was only one other way. He would master himself at last. He would release the man he loved. He would, after all of this, be free. They both would be free; the moment he achieved _kolinahr,_ their shackles would melt like the snow of Earth beneath the Vulcan suns.

He vanished to the Mountains of Gol. He left no word behind him.

He endured each moonless night without complaint.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If this ending is too sad, just remember that this all happens before The Motion Picture. Don't worry, they figure it out. Comments appreciated and points to anyone who spots a lyric reference! You can also find me as perphesone on tumblr dot com, where I am always happy to say hi!


End file.
